Pet Shopping
by DrinkingAlcoholicRainbows
Summary: "I want one with spots. I want it to be white. I want it to be white with black spots, like some kind of poor bloke with a really bad case of spattergroit and dragon pox mixed in one—" :: It's going to be Lily's first year at Hogwarts, and first years at Hogwarts require a pet. Unfortunately for Harry, finding one for his daughter is especially hard. And entertaining, but yeah.


**A/N: Extremely cracky drabble I wrote after using the Random Word Generator for the very first time. I am not repentant.**

* * *

"I want a dog."

Harry looked up from the Hogwarts shopping list for first years (which he did not need, thank you very much; he went on far too many shopping trips for his kids and/or Ginny, who demanded at least one bottle of Butterbeer every time he went to Diagon Alley—and how weird was it that he didn't find it remotely surprising or worrying? Oh no, oh no, he's rambling in his head again, he has got to stop doing that—), and stared at hazel eyes far too similar to James Potter's for it to remotely comfortable.

Basically, he's saying that Lily looked like a particularly mischievous demon. A cute demon, a cute little eleven-year-old demon with disturbingly big puppy-dog eyes, but a demon nonetheless.

"Lily," he said, trying to be patient and succeeding in the way his wife could only _dream_ of, "you can't have a dog. Only a toad, or a cat, or an owl. Why don't you get an owl, actually? They aren't especially demanding, and it confuses people when they hoot and think they're saying 'Who?', and most importantly, it's not a toad."

His daughter looked up at him, her eyes shining in the way that were positively evil, he tells you, evil in the way that Voldemort and Bellatrix's delightfully unborn child would cry its heart out. Harry smirks smugly in his head, gloating at the fact that his child was more terrifying than his arch nemesis', or his arch nemesis himself.

Ha. Ha ha ha.

"Dad," Lily said bluntly, so deadpan that there was positively no doubt on any onlooker's mind that this was the child of Harry and Ginny Potter, "didn't Neville have a toad at Hogwarts?"

Harry put his finger in the air. "Yes, but Trevor was slippery and always hopped away from Neville, probably to have some tea with the Giant Squid in the Black Lake. Point is, toads hate their owners with the burning passion of a thousand copies of sixth year Aunt Hermione, who was so jealous that she almost put me to tears. _Me._"

Lily shut her mouth. "So," she said, prolonging the 'o', "no toads."

"No toads," he clarified, and his daughter nodded sagely.

He was so proud of her wisdom at such a young age. Perhaps she'd be a Ravenclaw.

After a few seconds, however, she proclaimed, "But I still want a dog," and he hastily thought that she should be a Hufflepuff, if only because she was putting so much hardwork into her eyes to make them look aesthetically pleasing and devastatingly unable to say no to.

"I want one with spots. I want it to be white. I want it to be white with black spots, like some kind of poor bloke with a really bad case of spattergroit and dragon pox mixed in one—"

"Lily," he said, with so much torture in his voice you'd think he got dragged to one of Fleur's shopping trips. "You can't own a dalmatian."

She looked at him confusedly. "But I want a dog. Not a dally-wally-shan, or whatever you call it."

Harry resisted the urge to call up a Muggle pet store and ask for a "dally-wally-shan", as Lily so eloquently put it, simultaneously fighting the disturbing want to to find a zebra and give it to her, saying it was a new kind of dog that Muggles had discovered wallowing alone and helpless as it almost drowned in the icy, unforgiving ocean.

Huh. That would be amusing.

So not the time, though.

_...damn it._

* * *

In the end, he gave her a cat that somewhat looked like a dalmatian, with the spots and the like, and told her that it was an endangered kind of dog found by Auntie Luna in the deserts of Iceland (and, well, he knew that Iceland didn't have any deserts, but it's not like Lily would know _that_, right?), and that it was a belated birthday surprise.

Harry sneakily paid seven galleons to the cashier, and she didn't even notice. He knew the Sorting Hat told him he'd be good in Slytherin for _something_. He inwardly gloated in his head again, which was quickly becoming disturbing.

And, yeah, it was probably disturbing for the other people browsing in the Menagerie when he suddenly laughed out loud, but in his defense, Lily actually named the cat Dally-Wally-Shan.

Later in life, Harry will overhear her telling Lysander Scamander that it is a legitimate Chinese name, given to people who await great destinies and delicious noodles, and he will start laughing again.


End file.
